How many, and those too who profess to be lovers of art, speak of the cartoons, who have never seen them; and yet they may be enjoyed at less trouble and cost than the greater part of the fooleries and buffooneries that are crowded with visiters! The Southampton railroad and an omnibus will set you down at Hampton Court in a very short time. The difficulty is not to get there, but to return. There is so much to enjoy, that it must be left with reluctance. It is a noble thing to have Hampton Court open to the public-the palace—the gardens-and even the park-the pictures-to say nothing of the associations connected with it its retirement from the noise and stir of the great hive-the "fumum, et opes, strepitumque"-render it a scene of enchantment. It is like a palace from the romance of Ariosto, where all was to be had at a wish. If poor, you are made rich in a moment; for all is your own. You walk through richest galleries and rooms furnished with the greatest treasures of the world, and are not asked a question. You feel the luxury of a proprietor, without the burdens of the property. You are a prince, inasmuch as the detail of keeping up the establishment is kept out of your sight: you enjoy, without repining either at the cost or trouble. You know not how the walks are kept in order-but there they are. All you see are your invited and wellbehaved company; you know that they are gratified; you have no responsibility; and, if the heart can be at ease from extraneous cares, you are sensible that none will meet you here. You are really "monarch of all you survey," and " your right there is none to dispute." Hampton Court has thus its return of sunshine. Retributive justice makes recompense for all the wrongs that have been done. The beneficent and magnificent spirit of Wolsey now triumphs. The architecture is indeed mutilated; but what remains is happy in containing treasures infinitely greater than those removed. If there were nothing here but the cartoons, Hampton Court might be considered one of the richest palaces in the world. Poor Wolsey! The sour and the spiteful to any outward honour

of Church, State, and the liberal arts, still rave at the name of the "proud and pampered churchman," and his ambition-fellows that have not the smallest conception of the ambition of such a mind as the cardinal's. It would be worth dissecting: for it is a history of itself, of greater depth than most men can fathom. If it were a personal ambition, it enlarged his personality, drew within its compass a large society, with which it was identified in every enjoyment, and for the loss of whose happiness it felt keenly, as in reality a part of its own. We give things names-and ill names too

and choose to call pride, that all may scoff at it, what in fact is in its nature too complicated to have a name. In Wolsey it was a compound of various noble and excellent feelings, crowned with ability and power, and enlarged to a beneficence far out of sight of self, and ever alive to grand and immortal purposes. Wolsey had self-love-and who has not? True; but he loved himself, and prided himself, and honoured himself, not out of low gratification, but as an idea of his own creation, quite set apart from the low and grovelling lust of praise, as an image of history even created by himself, and to be maintained and supported throughout with the propriety, in all parts and movements, that a great dramatist would attach to his ideal character, the coinage of a genius that seeks something above the common world. Who will dare to say that Wolsey's grandeur had but himself for its object? His great mind would have been weary in a week of such a poor aim. He used magnificence as a means-and because he was of a magnificent nature, and all the materials of his mind were magnificent-and he used them, ready ever to bring out magnificent conceptions. And the true greatness of his character was in this-that the kindliest affections still found their natural play in his heart; a heart that, had it been of common capacity only, must have been too full with the pride heaped upon it, to the suffocation of the better feelings. And what had he not to contend with? "Some are born to greatness, and some have it thrust upon them :” but,

be it observed, that with Wolsey fell the whole character of the king. What wretches he had about him, and what a brute did he become, when the salutary, the preserving influence of the greater mind was removed! All Henry's atrocities were after Wolsey's fall. And this great man had not to deal with mankind as they are now; but in times which it now even requires labour and study to understand, and are therefore not at all felt by many, and but inadequately for the purpose of forming a right judgment by any; that is, we cannot easily convey our acquired knowledge into our feeling, so as to carry it with us through the history of those times. There is something extremely pathetic, and of great and beautiful simplicity, in the speech of Wolsey to his retinue, in his disgrace. In his episcopal habit, he called all together, gentlemen, yeomen, and chaplains, and addressed them from a great window at the upper end of his chamber. Thus says Cavendish :-" Beholding his goodly number of servants, he could not speak unto them, until the tears ran down his cheeks; which being perceived by his servants, caused fountains of tears to gush out of their sorrowful eyes, in such sort as would cause any heart to relent. At last my lord spake to them to this effect and purpose: Most faithful gentlemen and true-hearted yeomen! I much lament that, in my prosperity, I did not so much forgive as I might have done. Still I consider that, if, in my prosperity, I had preferred you to the king, then should I have incurred the king's servants' displeasure, who would not spare to report behind my back that there could no office about the court escape the cardinal and his servants; and by that means I should have run into open slander of all the world; but now is it come to pass that it hath pleased the king to take all that I have into his hands, so that I have now nothing to give you; for I have nothing left me but the bare clothes on my back.'"

Here is a noble subject for a historical picture-Wolsey's taste and knowledge of architecture must have been great. Who can see the tower of Magdalen college and doubt it? And Christ Church, and Hampton Court, though mutilated, bear sufficient testimony to his knowledge and love of

that excellent art of architecture, which none but superior minds should venture to meddle with; for if it makes greatness and wisdom conspicuous to the world, it makes folly so too, and therefore the more contemptible. Architecture is the natural constructive instinct of a great mind, the throwing off into palpable form of high thoughts. It is a part of that noble constructiveness which would build up institutions; the practical language of a governing mind. It is an empire in itself, in which genius loves to reign and be supreme. It was highly characteristic of Wolsey. We believe all really great men love architecture. A man who builds to himself a notable palace, or house, and by his arrangements adequately shows forth and appropriates a fine estate, makes to himself at least a centre of the world, to which all things come, or seem to come, and from which all thoughts radiate by enclosing apparently so much of the world's wilderness as he wants: all within his eye's reach is his real, and all without his imaginary domain. He creates the happiest delusion of space, regulates it by his own ideas, making it what he would have it, and ornaments it to charm him. It was a beautiful idea, and expressive of its perfectness that named the temple of the god the quas ns. In a fair and noble mansion, a man must, in some degree, feel himself a king, for his will has sway, and room to move in. It has a tendency to elevate, to give him character, decision, and that dignity which ever arises from repose within one's self; that need not be shoved and hustled from meditation and reflection by the too near proximity of ill-assorted things and persons. look upon the taste for architecture as a national good. It is the means of raising families to a visible responsibility, giving them something to keep up, and to hand down to others, greater than the littlenesses of uncultivated, unadorned republican man. The other arts require it; and all arts thus assisting each other, build up and constitute all that is beautiful in the world, visible and moral. How hard is it to give up any thing we make and call our own! Now, in nothing was Wolsey's superior greatness more shown than in the readiness of so large a sacrifice as Hampton Court. Had he

We

pride, he had enthroned it here; but his pride was a part of him. Driven out forcibly from one palace, it had a sure refuge in himself. Nothing, no outward act of malice or tyranny could rob the world's history of Wolsey. He

knew it, and even in his fall was greatest. This noble fabric of Hampton Court was, however, readily resigned by Wolsey into the king's hands, who afterwards seized, too, his palace afterwards called Whitehall. It is a curious fact, and one that marks a visible retribution upon things, names, and persons, whereby a sort of moral history of the world is written by a Divine hand, and carried on in continuance by striking incidents-it is a curious fact that these two palaces of Wolsey, as they are monuments of the rapine of royalty, so are they of the humiliation of royalty. We see the crime, the penance, and the punishment; and we must regard rather the official than the personal characters of the agents and sufferers. The facts and places must have, and suffer the consequences. It is the tale of Naboth's vineyard. These two palaces, plundered by the royal hand, were, in their due time, one the prison, the other the -place of execution of royalty. Wretched, unfortunate Charles! who can visit Hampton Court and not think of him, and detest his brutal persecutors? Yet there is intermediate interesting matter for reflection that may not be entirely passed over. The amiable, excellent Edward, VI. resided here, and yet, as if the guilty punishment of the house began early, not without fear of having his person seized, the short-lived successor of of the rapacious Henry. Then follows the inauspicious honey-moon of Queen Mary and Philip of Spain which was passed in this palace; then indeed the evil and prophetic spirit of the house might have uttered their epithalamium in the words of Cassandra the doomed.

Φόνον δόμοι πνέουσιν αἱματοσταγῆ. Unhappy nuptials! from which, in the place of other offspring, was begotten the furious bigotry that deluged the land with blood-the blood of saints and martyrs. But for this retribution on the Papal bigots was at hand. Protestantism triumphed in the succeeding reign; and here Eliza beth held her festivities. A respite is

given to the house to perform this act of justice, to make it indeed complete; for the bigotry, here engendered, was here put down under James I. For at this very palace was the conference held, the blessed effects of which were found in the improved translation of the Holy Scriptures, at which conference James uttered the grave aphorism, "No bishop, no king." Hampton Court now becomes interesting to us, having witnessed Charles I.'s happiness and his misfortunes. It was the scene of his happiest days, for here he, too, passed his honeymoon; and of his worst, for it was his prison. Poor King Charles! It was to his taste and love for the arts that Hampton Court owes its present glory

the Cartoons of Raffaele. They alone make up to us for all the architectural diminution this fine palace has suffered. These cartoons were purchased at the recommendation of Rubens. They had been cut into slips, for the purpose of making tapestry from them; and we must not omit our gratitude to William III., who had them carefully attended to, put them on frames, and built the gallery for their reception. Hampton Court owes its present appearance to William III. The alterations by Sir Christopher Wren are easily distinguished from the original buildings of Wolsey. The public are now indebted to him more for the Dutch style of the gardens than for some of the ornaments of the palace. It was the residence of Queen Anne-the scene of Pope's Rape of the Lock. Courts were occasionally held here by George I. and George II.; and Frederick, Prince of Wales, afterwards occupied it. Since then it has been appropriated, in apartments, to various persons. But the mind naturally reverts to the misfortunes of Charles. Here was he a prisoner of Parliament, in the very scene of his former happiness, that he had adorned with pictures worthy the taste of a king; and what became of the majority of them?-Sold by the tasteless republicans, and dispersed throughout the courts of Europe, and many destroyed-even the most sacred subjects torn down, or defaced, in sour relentless bigotry, which then, as a general disease, infected men's minds; and, however mitigated, the disease has never been eradicated, and occasionally breaks forth, even now,

with more or less strength. The king-killing, picture-destroying, tastedespising, virulent faction is still in existence; and had they full play, the results would be the same. King James's aphorism is for all ages, "No bishop, no king." There were multitudes rife for the full mischief, when, under the Reform mania, they would have murdered the bishop at Bristol; did mutilate and burn the Bible; set fire to the bishop's palace and the cathedral, and were ready to march to London to dethrone the king. No man, with the slightest pretensions to taste, or indeed to any true feeling, can pardon the atrocious acts of the Puritans, which have retarded to this day the cultivation of the arts introduced into this country and fostered by the first Charles. Go where we will, we see still their mutilations, their barbarities, monuments of their hypocrisy and infamy: and we see worse monuments in the characters of their descendants. The historical events that offer themselves so readily to the mind, upon a visit to Hampton Court, are of themselves sufficient for many a day's speculation; and the extremely valuable and curious portraits give an identity to such speculations that can scarcely be obtained elsewhere. We could not help smiling, however, at the whimsical notice with regard to the Portrait Gallery, which we found in our amusing and useful guide-book, to this effect," There are several interesting and curious portraits in this room, that are unknown." Our object in visiting Hampton Court was not to make historical speculations, but to see the pictures; and we hope we have not wandered too far from

our purpose. In fact, we consider some such preface is necessary; that something of the history of the place, its founder, and its inhabitants, must be known and felt before any person can fully enjoy the works of art at Hampton Court. For ourselves, had we confined our views to the mere pictures, we should not have written at all; for we do not presume, in a few hours, to have been able to have formed a correct judgment, where there is so much to see, and much so arranged as not to be very visible. We write, therefore, mostly with the hope that these remarks, through Maga, may direct the public attention, or the attention of those whose business it is,

and who really, as we believe they do, wish to cater for the taste of the public, to the state, and condition, and hanging of the pictures at Hampton Court. There is unquestionably a great deal of trash, mere rubbish, and no little of this cast that occupies a large space. But we could not help thinking that there are, or might be, some really fine things so placed as to be lost. Perhaps this is more the case with the portraits than with other subjects. We do not despise ornamental painting when it affects nothing beyond ornament. It is generally disgusting when it assumes subject, and conspicuous folly when it plays vagaries in allegory. Allegory, in fact, has been an incubus upon art and poetry. However Spencer and Rubens may have given it an eclat by their genius, we cannot but perceive that it was a clog upon their powers—but in bad hands what does it become? An insipid, senseless display of pictorial or poetical riddles not worth solving. It is the handiwork, at best, of a smart intelligence without feeling. That presuming allegory should show its barefaced audacity in a palace sanctified by the cartoons, is to be lamented-but more glaringly absurd allegories than those large performances on the staircases and ceilings at Hampton Court, were never perpetrated. But we admire, how it could ever enter into the brain of mortal man to twist the grave buffooneries of the heathen gods and goddesses into a courtly flatterly of modern princes. On entering a gallery of allegory, the visiter should be forewarned that he is expected to lay aside his common sense. Never was there such confusion of allegorical personages as figure on the walls of "The King's Grand Staircase"-painted by Verrio. It is quite after the fashion of the description in the Groves of Blarney